Contributed by @allabout_our_food
This is a simple, simply delicious alternative to pie that requires no special crust management or even a pie pan. Just leave yourself enough time to let the dough rest in the fridge for an hour before you bake. We’re using blueberries here, but you can substitute any other berries, or a mix, or sliced apples or peaches or whatever you feel like. This recipe serves four for dessert, or two for dessert and then the same lucky two for breakfast the next day. It can easily be halved, but who would want that?
Crust
1. Check your butter supply: this one calls for 8 T (one stick) / 112g or so of chilled unsalted butter. If you only have salted butter, omit the salt in the next step.
2. Put 1 ¼ cup / 160g flour, ½ t salt and 1 ½ t sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a couple of times.
3. Cut your chilled butter into chunks – we usually end up with 12-14 pieces. Put half of them in the bowl of the food processer with the flour mix and pulse 6 or 7 times. Repeat with the remaining chunks of butter. The butter-flour mixture should look coarse and grainy, with a few pea-sized lumps.
4. Add 2 T of ice water (as cold as you can make it) to the butter-flour mixture and pulse again 3-4 times. If the dough is starting to form itself into one mass, it’s done. If not (and this will depend on stuff like humidity and air temperature) add a teaspoon of ice water and pulse again. Repeat until the dough is one mass, but take it slow – you shouldn’t need more than a couple of teaspoons to make this work.
5. Using your hands, take the dough mass out of the food processor bowl and form into a disc. Wrap the disc in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for an hour. (You can also make the dough a day or two ahead of time.)
Filling, assembly and baking
1. Take your disc of dough out of the fridge to soften for 15 minutes or so before rolling. (If it’s super-humid where you are, and/or if the dough’s been in the fridge overnight, unwrap it so it can breathe a bit or it may get unhelpfully sticky. We find it helps to unwrap it anyway and put it on a sheet of baking parchment.) Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350F/180C.
2. Rinse 2 C / 200g of blueberries and put in a bowl along with 1 T of sugar and a dusting of flour – mix around with your hands to distribute the flour and sugar. Mix in a squeeze of lemon juice if you like.
3. When your dough feels pliable, take another sheet of parchment (or plastic wrap) and place it on top of the disc. Start rolling gently, rotating the dough/paper setup 90 degrees with each roll, until the dough is maybe 12 in/30 cm across and 1/8 inch or a couple of mm thick. It doesn’t have to be perfectly round or evenly thick.
4. Peel the top sheet of paper from the rolled-out dough and scoop your berries into the middle of the dough. Fold the edges or corners of the dough towards the center, leaving an opening for some of the fruit to peek through – how large or small is up to you. (You can brush the top surface of the dough with some milk and sprinkle with sugar if you like, but this isn’t mission-critical.)
5. Slide the whole galette, bottom sheet of parchment paper included, onto a baking sheet and pop into the oven for around 30-35 minutes or until the top is nicely browned. Don’t worry if some berry juice leaks out, that’s all part of the rustic charm.
6. Serve warm, plain or with ice cream or whipped cream.
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